Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Taken 3

The Mills family continues its terrible run of luck forcing Liam Neeson to get violent once more.

I quite liked the previous Taken movies, unfortunately this one just doesn't seem up to par. Yes, we get to see the hero from the first two films do his thing again here against an unknown threat which makes an interesting premise. The enemies also seem to be higher level / last longer in this movie but the problem is that there is a shortage of them. Actually, more to the point is that there is a shortage of the hero doing his thing, and that he has mellowed out a little I think.

Still likes to feed the bad guys lead though. Literally.

I'd say maybe a third or a fourth of the movie focuses on the police as they try do their thing, ineptly. They could have easily been nameless characters to let the movie go faster. The hero's daughter is also more of a place holder for a plot device than in the first movie, yet possibly gets more screen time here where she doesn't really do much - that is a pretty impressive feat when you think about it.

Lesser problems for me would be switching Xander Berkley for Dougray Scott (probably unavoidable due to scheduling) and having a long credit opening that does nothing to advance the story other than fly around a city. Woo. I'm nitpicking on credits these days, I think I'll make a post on that in the future... for now though, I'll finish up by giving Taken 3 two and a half bullets out of five and recommend watching it only if you liked the first two movies a lot. Don't expect that level of quality here though.